Drone delivery operations underway in 27 countries

Drone postal and goods delivery programmes are underway in 17 countries around the world while 13 countries are pioneering medical/pharmaceutical drone transport services. Altogether, 27 nations of the world are trialling, planning to test or have established drone delivery operations underway.

While the countries of sub-Saharan Africa have become pioneering nations in the development of beyond visual-line-of sight (BVLOS) medical deliveries by drone, Switzerland, Finland, Iceland, China, Australia, Singapore and the USA are leading the way in developing more commercial drone delivery operations.

These pioneers will soon be caught and overtaken by a likely second wave of adopters which include Germany, Dubai and Canada – especially Canada, where Drone Delivery Canada has developed a C$2.5 million-a-year business supplying one rural community with goods by drone and is now planning to expand this business to 200 more remote communities over the next few years.

The table below highlights the major delivery-by-drone programmes. While many of these are trials the number of established commercial businesses is growing, to include Project Wing deliveries in Australia (and Finland, shortly), Drone Delivery Canada supply routes to Moose Creek First Nation and Aha deliveries to inhabitants of Reykjavik. Zipline has established medical delivery operations in Rwanda and by the start of April 2019 had made over 12,300 flights.

In January 2019 Zipline started work on two distribution centres. In the first half of 2019 the company will begin providing most of the country with access to all medical products, with four distribution centres spanning from the dense southern regions surrounding Ghana’s capital, Accra, to the remote and arid north of the country.